Hayes Accua & US Robotics 2884B modem...Strange?!

I have been using cheap Mentor v92 modem which I had bought for £12 but connect almost everytime with faily good speed (45k to 46k), it is a software modem.

Now, I have got £30 US Robotics modem because I wanted to buy 'hardware' modem which I'm expected to see a little improvement but is having problem getting connected to Freeserve Anytime and if connected, very slow.

And tried £50 Hayes modem from PC world, (was exchanged for US Robotics above), no luck connecting to freeserve, impossible to connect! Even with correct drivers.

However, stranger thing is, with US Robotics modem, I have tested Virgin's ISP (Pay as you go), it connect everytime and is having great connection!

So I have decided there is something funny going on...

'Experts' have always saying that we're are better off with hardware modem yet Dialing and connection speeds seems to be worse with Hayes and US Robotics??

Or should I ditch Freeserve which has been serving me for 3 years now and switch to Virgin ISP?

hi therei might sound quite obvious but you wont get a much faster connection on dial up than 46k anyway so i dont think you should even bother trying to change your cheap modem if it is giving you that speed. even if you got the full 56k it wouldnt be woorth 30 plus quid. you probably wouldnt even notice the difference. you could always get broadband......

Actually, my village won't be getting broadband until next year...And I'm building & editing websites so I thought a better modem would help a little and reduces CPU useage but it doesn't look like this.

a faster modem wouldnt lighten cpu usage i wouldnt have thought, it would only speed up the transfer of your web pages to the server but not by a great deal. about the broadband, a friend of mine signed up the other day but was told that his area (its not a village but its on top of a hill) wouldnt be getting broadband till june but then two days later he recieved a modem and was told that he could connect in a week! so keep trying the broadband thing, i think they lie about when its going to be on for some reason!!!!